During semiconductor processing, the semiconductor wafer is often affixed to a piece of dicing tape to facilitate easy handling of the wafer. After the wafer has been processed, one normally saws it into individual chips, but the dicing tape holds the individual chips in position, because the saw only cuts thru the wafer and does not cut through the tape.
Recently, however, engineers have begun to fabricate micromechanical devices using semiconductor materials. In fabricating these devices, one often does not saw completely thru the wafer and separate the wafer into individual chips prior to removal of the dicing tape. Rather one usually saws halfway thru the wafer prior to removal of the dicing tape.
A semiconductor demounter normally removes dicing tape from a wafer. A demounter typically has a tape removal apparatus that removes the dicing tape. The tape removal apparatus may consist of a set of rollers located below a small slit at the top of the inclined plane. The user loads the edge of the tape into the rollers and the demounter mechanically removes the tape from the wafer leaving only the individual chips after the tape has been removed. In the case of fully sawn wafers, the process results in the chips neatly separating from the tape as intended.
However, in the case of partially sawn wafers, such as those used for micromechanical devices, breakage of the wafer has been a problem.